Saturday, September 22, 2012

In my previous post about my recently acquired Csepel Danuvia, I had mentioned that in the process of trying to find an oil leak on the clutch side of the engine, I discovered a few other minor problems. The oil was leaking out of a bad seal on the gear shift shaft, but when removing the gear shift lever I found that the splines on the gear shift lever and gear shift shaft were completely stripped. In addition to the stripped gear shift splines, the threads in the engine case for the gear oil fill plug were completely stripped. The plug was just sitting in the hole. One other thing that bugged me was the kick start lever had kind of a sloppy repair. There is kind of special style bolt that holds the top part of the lever on that was missing and somebody had beat the stud that it fits on with a hammer until it mushroomed enough to hold the lever on. In addition to that, there were some broken or worn stops for the rotation of the top lever piece that someone had tried to repair by welding blobs in their place. When kickstarting the lever rotated to far backwards making it easy for your foot to slip off the kick starter.

I've probably said it a thousand times but thank goodness for the internet. I was able to track down the parts I needed fairly quick. I received the parts I needed last week and began to put the bike back together.

Well actually before putting it back together I needed to repair the stripped threads in the engine case with a heli-coil.

This was a rather expensive thread repair. It's a M16 x 1.50 thread. It might have almost been cheaper to find another case.

While I had been waiting on parts I did a few other things like cleaning the carb, new spark plug, changing some of the wiring to look a little more period correct, and just general maintenance and tweaking to get everything the way I felt it should be. With the threads now repaired, I finished putting the bike back together. The morning after I got it all back together, I put fresh gas and gear oil in it and rolled it outside. It fired up on about the third kick. Boy was I a happy guy. I rode around the neighborhood for a little while. Not venturing too far since I don't have tags for it yet. The other reason I was happy is we've had a brutal summer in the midwest. It's finally cooled down and I was excited thinking I was going to get in some beautiful fall weather riding on my Csepel. Well, my excitement was kind of short lived. Later in the evening my wife wanting to see the bike running. As my wife was watching me ride, the clutch began to not work correctly. Uh oh, better bring it in and figure out what's wrong.

Having just put the bike back together on the previous night, I was now taking it back apart to figure out what was wrong with the clutch. As you can see in this photo, the very outside plate of the clutch is made of a bakelite (plastic) type material, and it had begun to break apart. The missing pieces of this were scattered in the bottom of the clutch case and gear box. Oh well, back to work on the Isetta while I'm trying to find a replacement for this part.

*UPDATE - Since disassembling the clutch I've learned this bakelite disc did not belong in a Csepel. It is probably out of a Simson motorcycle. I guessing somebody used it as an additional spacer because the 5 cork clutch plates that were on the bike were wore very thin.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Last week a friend ask me if I wanted to go with them to look at a Subaru 360 they were interested in buying. When we got to the storage locker where it was located, the seller opened the door and buried beneath mountains of stuff were the Subaru 360, a Bajaj 3-wheeled truck, and a HMV Freeway. I was totally not expecting to purchase any vehicles right now. I already have way too many projects, but I've been lusting for a little micro-truck for a long time and the price was right. Needless to say, there's now a Bajaj truck in my garage.

Monday, September 3, 2012

I said I've been slacking on my Isetta restoration, but I have been working on various things. One of the things I was working on is refurbishing the the under seat heat heater. It's been bead blasted, painted, and like many heaters, the lever for the flap was broken, which has been replaced with a reproduction heater flap from Isettas R Us.

I also needed to shorten the length of the heater cable.

After shortening the cable I also needed to adjust the castle nut on the heater and choke levers just a little tighter so that they would hold the cables in the desired position.

I've also been working on the wiring harness.

One thing I would really recommend when you're working on a wiring harness is picking up a booklet of wire markers. While all the Isettas wires are color coded, wire markers make it much easier referring to the black and white Isetta wiring diagram. I might also mention that if you need replacement terminal strips, Radio Shack sells the European-Style Terminal Strip. Additionally a good source for wiring harness supplies is the ebay seller 4RCUSTOMS. 4RCUSTOMS sells color coded wire, PVC sleeve tube, shrink tube, and a variety of wiring harness supplies for very reasonable prices with quick shipping.

I had a minor snafu when I began doing the wiring on the Isetta dash. My body shop had got the paint a little thin in one spot where the primer was showing through. I had to have them respray it. So after a small delay, it's back now and I've begun working on the wiring of the dash.

Another dash related item is I picked up a gas spring to help out the tired original spring in the Isetta door shock. I used a German made Bansbach spring, model # 1 6EYA9. I purchased it from Grainger. I had to fabricate some end pieces for the spring that fit inside the original spring and keep the gas spring centered.

I've also installed the rear and side glass. I can honestly say it was a royal pain in butt. I hope the front windshield goes a little smoother. I've also installed the interior luggage rack and net. Next up is getting the front door on the car.